NANA SAYS SCHOOL IS OUT-BRACE YOURSELF

Camps and summer trips organized ages ago, parents are bracing for the summer months with children home. Little ones are easier to manage as day care continues or camps are there. Teenagers between those camp years and summer jobs are harder to manage. What to do to fill the days? Volunteer experiences! Helping in the family business! Cottages or camping help for weeks at a time but for those working parents sometimes taking separate vacation weeks to accommodate children at home can be the norm. It is never easy to plan everything. Children can still get sick in the summer so there may be days away from work for parents. Who stays home and who goes to work! Lots of books, craft supplies and maybe activity books to work on next year's subjects. But summer should be fun with moments of boredom too. Children must learn to fill their time with their own meaningful activities. Boredom often teaches all of us at all ages to find things to do to fill our time! Closets get cleaned. Long walks occur! A book gets finished because we may be bored. A new hobby may be found! Let children and especially teenagers organize themselves too. Put away the gadgets and explore the environment. Exercise. Okay kid- ride that expensive bike. Clean your room. Give the teen a list of household chores to help the family system. Teach everyone there are no free rides in life! Little ones can help in the garden, give them a little section to be their own. The lazy hazy days of summer do not last long enough and childhood goes too quickly. Remember what you liked to do as a  child and reintroduce it to the children in your lives. What is old can be new again? Can't it? Maybe even have a retro theme for summer events. A day- if you did not have a cellphone or smart phone, how would you talk to your friends, for example. Oh well- brace yourself and discover what the summer vacation can bring! For those going on long trips to exotic places, enjoy. For those staying around town, enjoy your staycation! For this Nana, I know there will be days helping with my grandchildren and I know I want to make it fun for them!! And me too! I am still a kid at heart!